document count: 15

 

As a disciple of Croatian Party of Right founder Ante Starcevic, Ustase leader Ante Pavelic denounced Serbs as the chief enemy of the Croatian people. At times, Ustase propaganda even denied the common origins of the two peoples, claiming that Croats were a "lost tribe of Goths" (and hence "Aryans" in the Nazi sense), and Serbs a race of slaves brought to the Balkans by the Turkish Conquest. At other times, Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia were theoretically (and in the preponderance of cases, only theoretically) permitted to convert to Roman Catholicism and acquire rights which were reserved only for "racially pure" Croats. Later in the war, under considerable German pressure to curb the massacres which were increasing the ranks of rebels, the Ustase attempted to form a "Croatian Orthodox Church" for "Croats of the Orthodox faith," which Pavelic at other times characterized as a purely "political organization."

Ustase Minister of Education and Pavelic confidant Mile Budak elucidated the NDH's racial policy toward the Serbs in his infamous boast that the Ustase would "kill a third, expel a third, and convert a third" of the Serbian population, making Croatia a "Catholic state within ten years." The plan was put into effect within weeks of the founding of the Independent State of Croatia.

According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, out of 1,750,000 Serbs in the territory of the NDH, at least 600,000 were murdered, 250,000 expelled and 200,000 forcibly converted to Catholicism by the Ustase regime.

Order: The White Armbands
May 13, 1941: Order to the municipal leadership ordering all Serbs to wear a white armband designating them as Orthodox

Report: Expulsion of Serbs from Slavonia and Srem
June 2, 1941: Just six weeks after the founding of the NDH, organized mass explusions begin

Government Decree: Ustase Command-Dubrovnik Order No. 188:44
June 25, 1941: Prohibition on radios and forbidding Jews and Serbs from congregating at night, signed by Dubrovnik prefect Ivo Rojnica

Hercegovina in 1941
July 1941: Milovan Djilas' description of a country ripped apart by Maks Luburic's henchmen

Letter: "The Franciscans Haven't Gotten a Dime"
Summer, 1941: Powerful letter from a Catholic priest in the NDH to his exiled Orthodox counterpart

Letter: "Nature Takes Its Course"
July 31, 1941: Letter from a Franciscan priest from Koraca to the Ustase Prefect at Dervanta, on the marriage of widowed Serbs to Catholic men

Letter: Slovenian Settlers on Massacres Near Vojnic
August 2, 1941: Found in the NDH Archives, this is a letter written by Slovenian settlers relocated from the German Reich, addressed to German General Edmond Glaise von Horstenau on the extrajudicial murder of 400 Serbs by the Ustase

Police Report on the "Cleansing" of Serbs near Slunj
August 13, 1941: Shocking eyewitness report by the Croatian commander of a police platoon in Slunj about the mass expulsions, conversions, and slaughter of his area's Serbian inhabitants

Letter from the Bishop of Mostar to Archbishop Stepinac
August, 1941: Response to Stepinac's inquiry as to the progress of forced conversions to Catholicism among the Serbian population

Report on the Slaughter of Serbs near Prokupje
October 15, 1942: Report forwarded through the Interior Ministry regarding the killing of Serbs in Kordun and Banija since the NDH's formation in April 1941, including the infamous Glina Church Massacre

Letter to Minister Anthony Eden
November 13, 1942: An official with the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile in London informs the British Foreign Office of reports of mass slaughter in the NDH

Special Assignment in the Southeast
Dr. Hermann Neubacher, the German Plenipotentiary in SE Europe, on the "Croatian Crusade of Destruction"

A Jasenovac Survivor's Testimony
Dr. Nikola Nikolic on the Franciscan executioner, Fra Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic

Letter: Glaise von Horstenau on the Ustase Massacres
"The 'lucky' inhabitants were consigned to one of the fearsome boxcar trains; many 'passengers' cut their veins on the journey."

The Efficiency of Mass Slaughter
Maks Luburic on the efficiency of his concentration camp system

 

Crimes in the Jasenovac Camp
A new translation of the official state report on the largest concentration camp in Southeast Europe, including statements from the handful of inmates who survived Jasenovac

 

- None.

 

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